1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention are directed to a method of organizing decision instances and, more particularly, to a method of organizing decision instances based on reference architecture.
2. Description of the Background
During software construction processes, many design decisions have to be made and, as a result, several challenges exist. These challenges include how to identify the required decisions, including design alternatives, how to choose design alternatives that meet the functional and non-functional requirements in a given problem, project, and decision context, and which do not conflict with decisions already made and decisions to be made later, and how to enforce that made decisions lead to concrete actions and are implemented.
While tools for making software design decisions exist, these tools have major drawbacks in terms of decision identification, decision enforcement, and scalability. Conversely, operable process tools exist but may only describe steps or operations to be performed and/or what information should be captured without further specifying a capturing method or algorithm. Also, these tools may not be integral with analysis and design tools such that they cannot provide programming and/or communication interfaces that align design and decision modeling information.